Gameplay

Incredible Jack is about a Jack who is a Timbergrote, and is trying to rescue his children from the evil creatures of the land. You'll travel through different themed lands like most platforming games; prepare for forests, ice and lava. You'll defeat monsters by jumping on them, jumping on TNT barrels, or rolling over them with boulders, but it's usually lots of jumping. Incredible Jack isn't the most original game, but with Mario not coming to smartphones you have to make do with what you've got. Belmac Interactive could've gone the route others go and make a shameless ripoff, but it feels like they've put in the effort to separate it from that crowd.

The goal of each level is easy: save one of your children. This involves following the level from beginning to end, stomping enemies and collecting coins. It's easy enough to jump on enemies and most of the time you can jump on a bunch of them in a chain, but some enemies fall over strangely, make you fall into the path of an oncoming enemy, and take away one of your precious hearts. There are also too many areas where you need to jump on things where there are also enemies in the air, or other objects that hang down and put you into the way of danger without any room to jump away. It wouldn't be such an issue if the levels weren't so long. When the environment and enemies box you in it quickly becomes frustrating to lose that progress, unless you fork out more gold coins to continue on.

Visuals

The game is colourful and everything is cartoony and cheerful. Jack and the creatures all have a kind of 3D look to them. While the graphics are alright, the animation isn't so good, Jack. It is choppy and stiff.

Sound

Like the visuals the music is cheerful, but every time I've had the music on it's always the same tune looped.

Control

For a platformer on a touch screen, Incredible Jack seems to have great controls. There are arrows to move back and forth and one to jump/double jump, and I never had an issue with responsiveness with any of the buttons. If only there were more platformers that controlled this well.

What in-app purchases are there?

There are quite a few IAP in this game. Most are to make the game easier, or to purchase more in-game currency which is used to upgrade health and swimming time, or one off items. I was iffy on how the game seemed to lack checkpoints through the levels. This is to encourage you to use your revive option, which after the initial freebies you have to use gold. The gold is best used upgrading your health, but it can cost so much so you can either revive yourself or keep saving up for upgrades or just never die.

Conclusion

Incredible Jack isn't the most original game and it has its gameplay issues, but overall I haven't come across many mobile platformers that control as well. It's a playable game that can be fun if you look past its flaws. I wanted to like this game more than I did though as it felt like it was so close to being to being a much more enjoyable game